Posted on 07/09/2010 5:12:42 AM PDT by Red_Devil 232
Good morning gardeners. It is the second week of July and many of you have been enjoying the fruits of your labor for the last few weeks. Enjoy those homegrown tomatoes! For those of us who got late starts on our gardens our time will come!
Below the Weekly Gardening Banner is a link to a very good tutorial on how to save your own tomato seeds.
If you are a gardener or you are just starting out and are in need of advice or just encouragement please feel free to join in and enjoy the friendly discussion. Our Freeper community is full of gardeners, each with varying interests and skill levels from Master Gardener to novice.
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Hi, Red Devil. Everything outside here in central Alabama says, “WATER! We need water.” My roses especially would like a drink.
Lamh Foistenach Abu!
Production has slowed down quite a bit due to temps being in the mid 90’s the past several weeks.
Awoke this morning to find 1” in our gauge. Coupled with the rains we had last week, we’ve had a nice 4.4 inches the past 2 weeks.
We’ve had some really beneficial rain here this week. My pears and peaches really needed that. Some pears are falling off for no reason.
Garden is doing OK, and still picking tomatoes on a daily basis. Peppers are doing OK too.
Headed to the garden in a bit to pick tomatoes, squash and peppers. Hotter than hades and we need rain bad. Supposed to cool down this weekend, but not much.
We’ve had a week of drying out, which was sorely needed! We are about 6” ahead of rainfall for the year.
Picking green beans and squash. Pickinf Red Lake Currants and have picked a ton of Balck Cap raspberries down behind the barn. Score!
I have a lot of tomatoes on and a few plants with Early Blight, but they’re getting a dose of Copper spray today. Peppers are lagging because of the rain and lack of sunshine...oh, and the weeds are choking them out, LOL! Running out to do some weeding before I have to go to work...
Yep! Some here at my garden in East Central Miss. There have been popcorn showers all over the place but they seem to be missing my garden every time.
Glad to see you two getting some rains!
I got my hostas nubbed by deer as well. Next year I am growing a ton of marigolds around them!
Same here, too. I frequently see a long line of showers down around Biloxi but they never seem to sustain it up to Auburn.
Last week I was stolling through the yard and looked up toward the top of one of my magnolias. A nice hawk settled there. I was ecstatic. I wish he’d bring his friends. We have plenty of food for him, i.e. chipmunks and rabbits creating a mess of my grass.
I had put Lady Bug fertilizer on the yard before the rain last week. Now I’ll be mowing more than once a week with this moisture.
Learned real quick to get the okra young small and tender!
My acorn squash are producing like gang busters. I have seven or eight that are a nice dark green but still need some time on the vine and a bunch more just waiting to grow up. They are small as compaired to the ones in the grocery stores.
My tomatoes have plenty of fruit but still green. Can't wait for them to ripen. My plum tomatoes are full and itching to turn red at any moment!
The yard has a thin layer of bad, but fixable dirt on top of hard packed clay. There is no fixing the hard pack layer just below the surface, so I dig it out with a mattock, pile the chunks of clay in the driveway and add compost until the bad dirt turns into soil.
My neighbors think I'm nuts, but slowly but surely, the places that wouldn't grow anything or where anything but weeds or Bermuda grass would die during the summer dry spell are being fixed.
I thought I'd have a garden this spring/summer, but the clay was worse than I thought and my summer gardening has been mining clay instead.
I very much appreciate the pictures posted on these gardening threads! My motivation is being eaten alive by the clay and high temps. But, seeing what everyone else is doing keeps me working to transform my personal desert into something like the pictures posted here.
I have totally lost control of my spaghetti squash on the trellis.
But, thankfully, they are beginning to ripen!
Good News here RD! I’m getting 2 days off from toiling in the garden because my son is taking a long weekend and I’m filling in for him. The corn is coming along nicely but the strawberries are still a disappointment. Haven’t had rain since the June 1st so the water meter is getting a workout and We won’t get measurable rain now until late Oct or early Nov.
You should try some raised beds.
Nice! I’d buy some of that if I were local.
Just beautiful! Thanks for the pictures of your veggie stand!
Thank you!
Thanks! I have to make pepper jelly and tomato sauce today ... I harvested about 10 times the amount shown on the table.
I have fresh peas to munch on today (still not enough to be worth cooking), my watermelon plant seems to be reviving, and on my cucumber vine there is a teeny-tiny 1/2 inch long baby cucumber!!
Oh, and the strawberries have a second flush ripening, yesterday I picked 3 big juicy ones!
Unfortunately I won’t get much gardening done for a week or so, the Bristol County Renaissance Faire starts tomorrow, and I’m working on a special-order doublet for a guy who got a job there and needs a costume. Yikes!
The red ones are Creoles and the pink are Arkansas Traveler. My San Marzanos are loaded, but no ripe ones yet. I also have some Brandywines, Jubilees (yellow), Romas and Rutgers that are starting to set fruit. The small tomatoes are Husky Cherry Red and Sweet 100’s.
Turning into a bumper year here in SE Tennessee despite being a bit on the dry side. I recently returned from a two week trip out west to find lots of peppers, sweet corn, beans, onions, broccoli and ‘maters all ready to be picked. I’ve been blanching and freezing corn, freezing broccoli, canning beans and making salsa and chili relenos ever since I got back on Monday. I installed a drip irrigation system on my raised beds and berry beds before I left, along with sprinklers on the row crops, all controlled by a Rainbird sprinkler controller. Everything seems to love it. Round 2 of sweet corn (Augusta) in about another week. This is the sweetest, tenderest corn I’ve ever had. Also picking a few blueberries and raspberries. It’s about time to check my secret wild blackberry patch, too.....
Is there a name brand for that copper spray? It would appear that we have early blight on our tomatoes as well. How far from being ‘organic’ is that spray. Ie, super duper scary, kinda sorta scary, not very scary, etc...I realize the criteria for ‘organic’ seems to be ‘doesn’t really work but you can try it’...but so far that seems to have worked in our garden. SVB’s excepted.
Now that I’ve mulched most of my tomatoes I don’t seem to be having as many issues with the blight. It’s like the leaves that got it died and fell off and the rest of the plant looks great now. It’s the unmulched tomatoes that look icky now.
Peppers on the other hand are making like gangbusters and so far (knock on wood) my giant butternut squashes are going feral. The leaves are 2ft across and the stem+leaf is higher than my knees now. Don’t have to pull grass under them any more, they’re just shading it out and keeping on keeping on. They’re also making roots at nearly every leaf node. I had read they might do that but had never seen it before. Way cool.
SVB’s got about half my cucumbers. Bstrds. Fortunately though I’ve staggered my cucumber plantings this summer so I have several in peat pots ready to go out this weekend if the weather cooperates.
Oh, and those little tumbling tom tomatoes that I put in the divots in my raised bed...have taken over. I put one per divot for 3 divots in a row and then skipped a divot. I’ll be putting more space in between them next year LOL. I algoflashed half of them to see if there was a big difference. Hooboy was there! I put it on all of them last week. I have 9 of those cherry tomato plants and pick nearly a gallon of little tomatoes from just those plants every day. My ‘baby rosanna’ eggplants, also in divots, are also going insane since I algoflashed them.
My yardlong beans on the trellises just keep on keeping on. I planted purple podded ones so I can actually SEE them. I have a hard time discerning ‘green’ beans on vines. Always have.
More later, maybe.
You simply AMAZE me! Can’t wait until I can take my ops to your level! :)
Welllll now that you mention it we did negotiate a amicable end to the War of the Blueberries with a partial payment of a dozen M&M Cookies with further payments due next week of anything but Oatmeal Cookies...
We have chipmunk problems too. A whole family has taken over one of my raised beds. They have burrowed under a ginormous zucchini plant in there. So cute. So destructive! I didn’t realize we had them this far south till my oldest pulled me to the window one morning and said ‘look at the cute little mouse, mama!’. LOL. If our road didn’t have as much traffic I’d let my cats loose on them.
I’m hoping the showers avoid us until I can mulch the rest of my tomatoes...
(which, of course, means it will rain buckets today!)
Thank you for the kind words.
Your squashes are gorgeous. What, if anything, do you spray them with on the trellis?
I do like the Arkansas Travelers. They did very well for me last year. Are your tomatoes from seed?
Simply Gorgeous JaDB!!! Even the firewood looks like it has that that special touch of yours...
Mind you, the 'maters in Earth Boxes are just starting to bloom, and they are NOTORIOUS for producing boatloads of tomatoes.
Going to can some chow-chow today...and attempt to make some cinnamon pickles from all the cukes I am getting. Just started picking squash, and have several watermelons that may be ready by aug. My Pear tree is full and we usually harvest pears around the end of august. Our local sheriff gave us a huge bag of peaches from his orchard so I canned several jars of peach pie filling. Weather man calling for 40% chance rain on Saturday, we could use it.
If it were up to her, though; we would probably lose most of those veggies...you'd never get her to pick knowing there might be a snake or two lurking in there. :-)
Our next door neighbors killed 3 water moccasins about 100 ft from my cucumber patch. I’m veeeeeeery careful down there now.
My cucumber plants are small so I was quite pleasantly surprised to discover blossoms one day! The Jericho lettuce continues to produce excellent romaine type lettuce; sowed some lettuce seeds in a place which gets bright indirect light and about 1 hour of direct sunshine each day. The seeds sprouted in about 2 days and are almost ready to transplant. There are plenty of cherry tomatoes to share with the neighbors. Off to water the plants.
From what I understand it is considered organic and this one does work on blight!
Yeah my watermelons wont be ready until late Aug.
Bonide Organic Copper Spray.
The copper spray I sell/use is made by Bonide. Copper is a natural element; this spray is approved for organic growing. Of course, there are PANIC remarks all over the instructions. Those are there for the idjits that will DRINK the stuff and then sue Bonide. *Rolleyes* The stuff is safe to use. I use it and I’ve got a 15 year organic operation going here.
I just sprayed my 25 plants down wtih it this morning. And I sprayed a little on the dog by accident; Rufus came running around the corner of the garden, right into the spray, the dope. (Didn’t get into his eyes, lucky!)
I’ll let you know if he developes an extra head, facial ticks (to go with his wood ticks!), a second tail...LOL!
The Early Blight is in the soil, so that’s why your mulched tomatoes are faring better; the mulch stops the soil from splashing onto the lower leaves , and then it can work its way up the whole plant. I have ONE plant that’s quite full of it, two others that have a little and the rest look great.
I planted a lot of ‘Viva Italia’ paste and ‘Legend’, a red slicer; both are varieties with great resisttance to the early blight, so look for blight-resistance when you make your selections next year.
Wish I could stay and PLAY, but it’s ‘Dollar Days’ at Jung’s so I’m girding my loins and I’m off to battle! :)
Thanks! Now off to Jungs to see if they sell it there online.
Hopefully this’ll nip it in the bud.
BTW, are you going to have any sort of a fall/winter garden? I’m curious since you’re in my zone/climate area. I’m going to be starting little broccoli and cabbage plants sometime in early August.
Thanks! Now off to Jungs to see if they sell it there online.
Hopefully this’ll nip it in the bud.
BTW, are you going to have any sort of a fall/winter garden? I’m curious since you’re in my zone/climate area. I’m going to be starting little broccoli and cabbage plants sometime in early August.
The copper we used in our organic garden was brand name Bonide. The assoc approved it so it must be organic enough and it did indeed help. That and ripping out all the affected leaves.
Garden was good to us today! I have two kinds of tomatoes, eggplants, zuke, squash, hot peppers, bell peppers and onions for dinner. Our community corn is looking good too.
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